By 
Ever since the Siri announcement during the unveiling of the iPhone 4S last year, there have been a slew of voice-based assistant apps for Android. And though I am yet to find one that performs as well as it claims to, there’s no denying the marketing potential of them.
This makes the focus on Aisha in the publicity material for Micromax’s latest device for the Indian market, the Superfone A50 Ninja, understandable. First things first, the phone aims at the extreme low end, costing only Rs 4999 (USD 95). It runs Gingerbread on an undisclosed 650 MHz processor, packs a 3.1 inch screen and a 2-megapixel camera.
Considering the price, it’s pretty impressive that Micromax has chosen to offer such a pre-loaded app. AISHA, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Speech Handset Assistant, was developed by Dexetra, the developer behind another voice-assistant, IRIS.
I personally expect the phone to do well. It’s already the cheapest Android smartphone that I’ve heard of in the Indian market (I might be wrong about this since there are so many lower-end devices over here that it’s tough to keep track of). The presence of AISHA will undoubtedly make the A50 Ninja stand out.
[via Engadget]
I can hear the voice now, “sheeeeit, you wants me to search for whut? Nuh uh!”
I still think Google should ditch their project Majel name, replace the voice with William Daniels, swap the pop up mic icon for 3 red segmented bars and call it K.I.T.T.
Oh yeah!!
Now only if my name was Micheal….. XD lol
http://cdn1.staztic.com/screenshots/knight-rider-kitt-voice-box-20-2.jpg
They should honor the android tradition of customization and let us name our assistant. I’d name it Jarvis for now. (just saw Avengers with iron man talking to his computer jarvis) Would call it alfred when the dark knight rises is released and computer when watching dexters laboratory reruns. New name with star trek sequel in 2013 etc
Most important: use that wobbly sound that KITT makes. whoa whoa
Or the similar sound of a cylon. By your command!
The original Cylons were the best.
Awesome.
nice mockup! that should get the lawyer ball rollin! lol
@Aslan – that’s actually a really good idea. Heh.
I think that speaktoit is a great alternative to apple’s siri, they need to do something about the delay between their app and google voice though(takes too long). Text to voice is actually a great app, with great response time, but it has that annoying startup action step(you have to say text by voice before you can use it). These developers should combine to make the killer app android needs.Voice action is going to be preferred over keyboard action in the future, look at bluetooth, and how well it’s been adopted in a few short years.
I’m between Evi and Dragon, both seem to have some strong points and work well.
I think that these developers are missing the point of why people ACTUALLY want these assistants. Siri is cool but it’s not nearly as functional as Apple would lead you to believe in promo’s. I don’t want a voice assistant to have a conversation with it, I just want it to do stuff for me. “Find the nearest Pizza Hut”, open my map and show me the results. Don’t ask me any more questions unless you didn’t understand me.